generation to eradicate in the Indian the
ingrained heredity of shiftlessness of all the generations that had gone
before. It is a source of high satisfaction that there was on the part
of the padres no record of overreaching the simple native, no failure to
respect what rights they claimed, no carnage and bloodshed, that have so
often attended expeditions sent nominally for civilization, but really
for conquest. Here, at least, was one record of missionary endeavor that
came to full fruition and flower, and knew no fear or despair, until it
attracted the attention of the ruthless rapacity and greed of the
Mexican governmental authority crouching behind the project of
secularization. The enforced withdrawal of the paternal hand before the
Indian had learned to stand and walk alone, coupled in some sections
with the dread scourge of pestilential epidemic, wrought dispersion,
decimation and destruction. If, however, the teeming acres are now
otherwise tilled, and if the herds of cattle have passed away and the
communal life is gone forever, the record of what was accomplished in
those pastoral days has linked the name of California with a new and
imperishable architecture, and has immortalized the name of Junipero
Serra[1]. The pathetic ruin at Carmel is a shattered monument above a
grave that will become a world's shrine of pilgrimage in honor of one of
humanity's heroes. The patient soul that here laid down its burden will
not be forgotten. The memory of the brave heart that was here consumed
with love for mankind will live through the ages. And, in a sense, the
work of these missions is not dead--their very ruins still preach the
lesson of service and of sacrifice. As the fishermen off the coast of
Brittany tell the legend that at the evening hour, as their boats pass
over the vanished Atlantis, they can still hear the sounds of its
activity at the bottom of the sea, so every Californian, as he turns the
pages of the early history of his State, feels at times that he can hear
the echo of the Angelus bells of the missions, and amid the din of the
money-madness of these latter days, can find a response in "the better
angels of his nature."

In swift contrast to this idyllic scene, which is shared with us by few
other sections of this country, stands the history of a period where for
nearly two years this State was without authority of American civil law,
and where, in practice, the only authority was such as sprang from t